Kausfiles

The Case for Secret E-mails

Byron York notes that the Presidential Records Act bans a president from using an un-official e-mail system unless the messages are then properly archived. He suspects President Hillary couldn’t be made to obey this law. Maybe. Certainly she shouldn’t be above the law. But it should also be noted that this particular law is insane. Decisionmakers — from presidents to parents — need a private zone of honesty where they can say what they really think. That used to be done in person, and over the telephone. Now it’s done through e-mails. Making all e-mails subject to disclosure, even decades down the road, just forces people to search for other, inevitably more cumbersome, ways to have the real conversatons that matter (as opposed to BS for-public-consumption discussions). When a Benghazi hits, do you want the Secretary of State focused on protecting American interests (actions for which she will be judged by voters) or protecting her own reputation in the archives? … It’s the Sunshine Fallacy, the idea that all human activities can be completely and accurately recorded for the public without humans reacting (in counterproductive ways) to all that public data collection. Obvious analogy: Heisenberg Principle. Cultural reductio ad absurdum:“We Live in Public.” …

Another way of putting it: The Records Act is the equivalent requiring a White House taping system, for the benefit of historians. Wasn’t the discovery of Nixon and Johnson’s taping system a huge scandal? When did historians become the most important people in the world?….